In two weeks, I’m going to live in a cabin. Not for a weekend, not for a week, but for seven or eight months.
I just washed my hands at a normal sink; in two weeks, I’ll fetch water from the spring. Despite the upstate New York version of the first day of spring, I’m warm in this cozy bedroom; in two weeks, if I get cold, I’ll have to go out and get another piece of dead tree to burn. While I’m out there, I might stop by the outhouse.
Strangest of all, at least for me, is that in two weeks I’ll be writing this blog by hand.
This afternoon, I went bowling for the first time in awhile. The ball was a bit too heavy. Now, after ending with a 64, my wrist hurts almost as much as my pride. Yet this is the same wrist that in two weeks will shovel manure, dig trenches, and chop wood.
How do you prepare to live in a cabin? We’ve collected a few essentials, such as a baby potty (which moonshines as a chamber pot) and a contraption for Cariysa to ride on someone’s back (thrift store for three dollars, praise the Lord, and blessings on the head of Anna Hatke for showing us hers). We’re still looking for a cheap lantern (the kind that uses candles) and a non-electric typewriter (my handwriting’s worse than my writing). Also, Beth’s laying plots to snag inexpensive curtains. Finally, we can’t decide between the camp shower that hooks somewhere like a bleeding IV bag or the good old-fashioned Little-House-On-The-Prairie washtub. I favor the tub, but where do you find one? Yeah, yeah, I know, eBay. Ironic, isn’t it, that it takes the most up-to-date technology to go primitive.
Honestly, preparation is more about what not to bring. You’d think it wouldn’t take much to live in a cabin, but I fear our cute little Honda Civic is already more overbooked than a Christmas flight out of D.C. (That didn’t really work, did it? Oh well, just a blog. I’ll cut it for the book.) There’s a menacing pile of essentials in the basement, and it’s growing. What do we really need? If I knew that, I’d be building my own cabin.
So we pack and talk and howl at eBay. (Outbid in the last ten seconds? Ten seconds! The jerk! It’s this stupid connection!) We remember to get excited once in awhile.
What inspired to me write this blog was the sight of the empty space on my desk where my second monitor used to squat until, well, just before I started this blog. It didn’t fit in the closet, so it’s on the floor now, where the second computer used to be. And the second keyboard and mouse needed to go somewhere, so they’re temporarily taking up all that new space on the desk. I’m not quite sure I accomplished anything. But I can see the wall that used to be behind the monitor, so that’s good. It’s slightly more appealing than that great gray sightless eye. And it makes me wonder, What price space?
But at the same time, that empty chair by the fireplace reminds me that even this computer at which I type will soon depart. Not forever…I plan to rig a windmill or waterwheel on the second year of our own homestead. But that’s two years away.
In two weeks, I’ll no longer have this machine that holds the bulk of my written thoughts, copied and double copied and organized all the way back to junior high. Perhaps it won’t be that big a deal. Maybe I’m only feeling the first pangs of withdrawal. But right now, this magic box holds my gaze for most of my waking hours. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m just the teeniest bit dependent.
Computers are so easy. Okay, not always. Linux and I are still a bit short with each other after my hours and hours of as-yet-unsuccessful attempts to get my printer to work on that second computer. But, in general, I tap a button and wham! the only world I see dances at my command. “K”, I think, and tap the letter appears on the screen.
Yes, writing is similar, but you can’t pick up a notebook and say, “Make three copies for safe keeping. Then find that one part about ‘dewy drops of morning wept’, and take that whole paragraph and slap it at the end.” Nor can you shred fourteen pages and then say, ‘Never mind, keep it.’
This isn’t a paean to computers; notebooks don’t vanish if the power goes out. Instead, it’s a genuine tremor. All my body does anymore is wiggle its fingers. Old futurists like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne would have a field day with the contemporary workplace. Except that they imagined the brain swelling with inactivity, and it’s apparently the belly. What will my body do in two weeks?
I tried to construct a wooden cross for Lent. There’s this tradition where you cut two pieces from the Christmas tree, make a cross, drill a hole at each end and at the intersection, then put in white candles and have an Advent wreath equivalent for the five weeks before Holy Week. It’s in reverse, though, since you start with them all lit and extinguish one per week until the darkness of Holy Week.
We’d cut pieces from our own Christmas tree last year, but never made the cross. I’ll get ready for farm life, I thought. Cut a notch in each piece so they fit together. Piece of cake.
Well. Wood isn’t computers.
Soon my saw slipped and I cut my finger. Great, I thought. When you get there, you’re going to kill yourself trying to boil an egg. There were certain tools I didn’t have, and I nearly tossed the mess aside and curled up with a good book on homesteading. But that seemed too pathetic, even for me, so I didn’t. I found out I could wedge a flathead screwdriver in and a few hammer strokes would dislodge chunks of wood along the grain. Crude, but it worked. I also found out that the pine of a Christmas tree has a much tangier smell then my computer. I finished the cross.
A silly little success, but after years of instant gratification, my victory over the surly independence of a couple chunks of wood was satisfying. Turns out that getting two bumpy pieces of wood to fit together and lay evenly on a table satisfies me at a deeper level than getting a program to work.
I guess a lifetime farmer might see it the other way around. Maybe a large portion of humanity still perceives computers as half-sentient trolls eager to slurp theses, malevolent creatures subject only to the dark wizardry of the ‘computer literate’. Still, the program vanishes when you shut down. The wood remains. There’s something about that.
There’s also something about movies and video games. Frankly, I’ve been binging. As soon as I finish this blog on the upcoming pleasures of the simple life, I plan to beat my high score on a freeware Tetris clone.
That or decide whether I still need all the illegal photocopies from my college professors. It would be one less box to take, not to this farm, of course, but to the house we build in 2005. One less box. A few more hours I won’t waste looking through papers when the urge to clean comes every month or so. Why is it so hard to let go?
That’s what I look forward to in this cabin. Being forced to let go. Seeing how little we can get by on, and how much time that leaves for walks in the woods and sunrises and horses and kissing and all the other gifts of a beautiful life. What price space? What price time? What’s worth spending time on? How much time do I spend on sheer maintenance? I plan to find out.
I’ll end with a poem my wife typed up and put on my desk. A little cheesy in parts, but hey, it’s poetry.
Leisure
by W. H. Davies
What is this life, if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare,No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep and cows.No time to see, in broad day light,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
